Streeting – Brexit promises to Labour MPs not worth the newsprint they are printed on

Streeting – Brexit promises to Labour MPs not worth the newsprint they are printed on

January 31, 2019 1:01 PM

The Government have stepped up their efforts to entice Labour MPs to vote for Brexit, briefing newspapers that ministers would consider spending increases and changes in the law on workers’ rights if Labour MPs would back the Government.

In response the People’s Vote campaign have published new research and analysis on the real agenda of the supporters of the Government’s latest Brexit proposals showing that they are determined to strip workers of their rights and willing to use Brexit as an historic opportunity to attack social protection, trade union immunities and basic rights in the workplace.

As the Labour leadership engage in negotiations with the Prime Minister over Brexit, the campaign is warning that any Brexit deal would be bad news for Labour heartlands.

“Theresa May’s priorities are to say anything that keeps her in office and stops her ramshackle Brexit roadshow from collapsing.

“This week has shown she is even willing to tear up her own deal and play fantasy Brexit with the extremists of the ERG, gambling with peace in Ireland along the way.

“Today the Downing Street spin machine has briefed journalists that the Government would consider offering extra money to coalfield communities and a strengthening of workers’ rights if Labour MPs voted for Brexit.

“It’s a promise not worth the newsprint it is printed on. Not just because every analysis, including the Government’s own, shows that Brexit will leave us worse off and result in the Government having less money to spend, but also because, as the analysis published by the People’s Vote campaign shows, the Brextremists on the Tory benches on whom she is now actively appeasing, will never stand for it.

“Their real agenda is to slash workers’ rights, to weaken trade unions and to open up our public services to untrammelled market forces. They are fully paid-up members of the Donald Trump fan club and committed enemies of any social dimension in market regulation and service provision.

“For Labour MPs to align themselves with the likes of Boris Johnson, Iain Duncan Smith and Priti Patel on Brexit would be a mistake that would rank alongside Ramsay MacDonald’s 1931 creation of a ‘National’ Government. It would never be forgiven and never be forgivable.

“It is time Labour MPs and the Labour leadership made it clear that no promise on Brexit from Theresa May will ever be believed and that the attempt to stitch-up Brexit in secret negotiations in Westminster will never be acceptable.

“Instead Labour must press ahead with its conference policy – with Theresa May’s Brexit deal now in tatters and a deadlocked Parliament refusing to call a general election Labour must now lead the campaign for a People’s Vote.”

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